Painful Tumescent Liposuction Procedure - Is This Normal?

There are many variables that might explain why some patients feel more pain than others during the anesthetic delivery prior to liposuction. If an area is being redone, if there was prior surgery there or trauma, then scar tissue has been built up and that is more painful to numb. If the anesthetic fluid is not buffered, the pH may be such that it can burn a little more. The local anesthetic is delivered by me very, very slowly which helps minimize the pain. Some medication can be given to help minimize the pain felt, but many times this is not even necessary with the above techniques. There are some patients whose pain threshold is so low that what isn't felt as painful by most people is excruciatingly painful to them. There may be a biochemical reason for this in how their neurologic pathways are constructed. The overwhelming majority of my patients do not feel that the anesthetic delivery is painful.

                                    Tumescent
liposuction represents a significant advance in the management of localized fat
collections. When this technique is utilized with local anesthesia alone the response varies from patient to patient.  The majority of patients appear to do
well and have good results especially when smaller amounts of fat are
removed.  Unfortunately, we
frequently see patients who have had similar experiences and are less than
happy with their procedure.

                  For
this reason, many surgeons supplement local anesthesia with I.V. sedation or
general anesthesia to minimize pain and discomfort during the procedure.  When utilizing this approach, patients
can have more fat removed and avoid multiple procedures.  The procedure is more comfortable and
avoids break through pain which can occasionally occur with local anesthesia
alone.

                  It’s
important to realize that all surgical procedures and anesthetic techniques
have risk.  This is true whether
local anesthesia, I.V. sedation or general anesthesia are utilized.  Most surgeons who perform tumescent liposuction
agree that the anesthetic technique utilized is less important than the use of
certified operating room and the presence of an anesthesiologist.  In other words you don’t want your
surgeon to be your anesthesiologist. 

The infiltration of fluid is not usually painful, but can on occasion cause a little pressured feeling.  There may be a feeling of stretching or fullness, but that should resolve quickly. Thank you for your question and good luck with everything.

There is pain associated with liposuction. I usually perform liposuction under general anesthesia or under local with IV sedation, so I will be able to take out as much fat as I can while making it a comfortable experience for the patient.

Liposuction under local anesthesia is not for everyone.  Some patients are able to relax and get thru it while others are much better under general anesthesia.  The tumescent solution does have some of the numbing medication in it, but it is still uncomfortable for most unless asleep.

Tumescent anesthesia was developed by a Dermatologist in order to allow liposuction without the need for general anesthesia. It is touted as being "better" because it avoids the (minimal) risk of general anesthesia, but what it really avoids for many non-surgeons who want to do cosmetic surgery was the need for surgical privileges at a hospital. Tumescent liposuction was and is a huge advance in improving results for liposuction patients, even if developed and popularized by a non-plastic surgeon.

Without inciting a "Turf battle" here, I will first say that tumescent liposuction is a procedure performed (properly) by physicians of several different specialties. These include plastic surgeons, but there are physicians of other specialty training that perform this procedure, including Dermatologists who call themselves "cosmetic surgeons" with varying degrees of surgical training, Dermatologic Surgeons with some surgical training, but not a full plastic surgical training program, and others, such as facial plastic surgeons, who sometime stray below the head and neck area, and even OB/GYN  or general surgeons with minimal plastic surgical training. Of course, there may be fully-trained plastic surgeons who may not have extensive cosmetic surgery experience with this procedure. What they do have is full surgical training in reconstructive and cosmetic surgery (including liposuction) of all parts of the body.

The key here is to check exactly what type of training your surgeon has had, where he or she operates, what type of hospital credentials (for which procedures) are granted, and expecially if they operate in their own office surgical facility, if their facility is AAAASF-accredited. If not, your "surgeon" may not be a real plastic surgeon. He or she may still be a wonderful liposuction expert, but you should know that injecting liters of tumescent local anesthesia into the fatty tissues of an awake patient is often quite painful, and that is why most board-certified (American Board of Plastic Surgery) plastic surgeons do their tumescent liposuction procedures under general anesthesia or at least intravenous sedation. Better sculpting can be performed, I believe, in a patient who is not flinching in pain from that occasional jab into an area that is not completely anesthetized by the tumescent fluid.

Regardless of the specialty or training of your surgeon, it seems as if your tumescent anesthesia was inadequate for good pain control during your operation. You avoided the cost and (negligible) risk of general anesthesia, but you suffered more discomfort than you anticipated. Hopefully your results will be what you expect. I am sorry you had this bad experience; it is truly not what the vast majority of liposuction patients encounter.